Police search Birmingham address after gang plot to kill Indian general

Lt Gen Kuldeep Singh Brar is escorted after arriving at Mumbai international airport

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Police are searching an address in Birmingham after a gang tried to kill an Indian general in central London.

Counter-terrorism officers today arrested eight people over the attempted murder.

A gang of four people attacked Lieutenant General Kuldeep Singh Brar as he walked with his wife on Old Quebec Street near Marble Arch on Sunday night, slashing his neck.

Detectives are keeping an open mind as to the motive, but Mr Brar was involved in a military operation against Sikh militants in Armritsar in 1984 that left an estimated 1,000 people dead.

Two people were arrested in Hillingdon, west London, shortly after midnight this morning - a 42-year-old man on suspicion of assisting an offender and a 38-year-old woman on suspicion of conspiracy to murder.

Three men aged 42, 37 and 30 were detained around 1am in Kensington and Chelsea, London, and another two aged 32 and 31 around 5am in Holland Park, west London, on suspicion of conspiracy to murder.

The eighth person, a man aged 20, was arrested on suspicion of assisting an offender in Holland Park.

Addresses in South Shields, Birmingham and London are also being searched as part of the investigation.

This follows four arrests made yesterday in the Midlands - a 33-year-old man and a 40-year-old woman in Wolverhampton, and two men aged 34 and 25 in West Bromwich, all on suspicion of conspiracy to murder.

Detectives want to speak to passers-by who stopped to help 78-year-old Mr Brar, who was visiting London, and anyone else who saw what happened.

The attackers were all Asian, were wearing dark clothes and had long beards. One of them was younger and slimmer than the other three.